Breaking News English

The National Museum of London has [uncovered / covered] what it says is the first ever recording of a family Christmas, [dates / dating] back 110 years. It is of the 1902 family [gets-together / get-together] of the Wall family from North London. It is part of 24 recordings made by the family between 1899 and 1917. The recordings are from [various / variety] family gatherings, including [commented / comments] made during World War I on sons who were sent to fight. The Wall family used a phonograph machine to put the audio of their special [incidents / occasions] on wax cylinders. Historians at the museum say it is amazing the cylinders have survived as they are very [fragility / fragile] and usually disintegrate [over / pass] time. They also say the [sound / sounds] quality of the [century-old / century-age] recordings is amazing.

The phonograph machine was [discovery / discovered] in the year 2000 by David Brown, 71, in his house near Cambridge. Mr Brown is the [fabulous-grandson / great-grandson] of Mr Cromwell Wall, who made the recordings. Brown saw no [use / using] for the machine and [donated / donation] it to his local museum, which passed it [in / on] to the Museum of London in 2008. It discovered the [significant / significance] of the wax cylinders and has spent the past four years [painstakingly / painlessly] restoring them. The museum said: "We tried to reduce any noise by [cleaned / cleaning] the cylinder first with a fine brush that can [get / let] in between the [groovy / groove] and once we had the best playback from the cylinder we then digitally cleaned them up". Mr Brown said: "It's incredible how [clear / clarity] the recordings are."